Posted on 04/26/2021 8:03:00 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
History is an interesting thing. If a journalist doesn't want you to hear about it, they simply don't have to report it. Well what happens if a historian omitted facts in the same manner?
What if, let's say for example, the Underground Railroad consisted of slaves escaping from a state deep in the throws of slavery northward to a different state and that state had abolished slavery? Well of course the historian wants you to focus on the slave continuing their journey up to Canada, but the reality is that not all continued on their course.
What if many slaves stayed in northern states where slavery had been abolished? Well, they did.
Well who did that? Who abolished slavery in those northern states, or who wrote that Northwest Ordinance which secured to places such as Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, and many others, would be states born as free states?
Who was it in, say, New York, who wrote those abolitionist laws? Pennsylvania and Vermont and pick any of those states you want. It was the founding generation in general and the Founding Fathers in particular. That's who did that.
Let's explore it from the opposite side, because that's really where the truth will become apparent.
What if the Founders didn't push for abolition in those northern states? Or in Indiana and other states that were formed after the Northwest Ordinance, or in Connecticut or any of the others. What if the Northwest Ordinance would never have been written, would there have ever been an Underground Railroad, or at least would it have been as we know it today?
If these states hadn't become free states, then where would the runaway slaves have run? Well, the simple answer is to Canada but this isn't so simple. The fact is that many fleeing to freedom did stay and make homes in free states and the Founders DID engage in this abolitionist activity and DID pass abolitionist laws once they didn't have the king vetoing these laws.
Isn't it then fair to say that the Underground Railroad came into being _because_ of the Founders, and not despite them?
I’ll take that, although the NW Ordinance is still problematic to your analysis, which reinforces the point here.
As for Eli Whitney... there were far more slaves in Maryland than in most southern states before he turned cotton into ca$h. That proves nothing, except, perhaps, that if West Africans didn’t die of small pox and malaria at the same rate as indigenous Americans or Europeans, there’d never have been any African slaves in the Americas.
It existed. It just didn’t rescue millions like the progressives wanted to claim for a while.
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What is the relation between the Founders and the Underground Railroad?
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Posted on 4/26/2021, 11:03:00 AM by ProgressingAmerica
I had a different thought about this. I wonder if the Underground Railroad is the next target for these historians? If the UR were completely erased, would that benefit progressivism? I bet it would. Why can't revisionists keep revising and revising until they simply reach zero?
If I can imagine it, that means they already have as well and it sounds to me as if the scheme is already afoot. It's easier for progressives to claim America as racist if there were no good Americans helping along slaves to freedom.
Future snowflake says: "Railroad? What railroad? It was underground? You mean like the NY subway? Did they even have the technology to build subways in the 1860s? I think you're lying. All I know is that my teachers taught me that America is racist so some underground subway sounds fraudulent to me. Now you're telling me that it wasn't a subway and it wasn't a railroad and it wasn't even under the ground? Go away, you're just making up excuses and white lies."
The progressives already erased the black heroes that fought with our Founders against the Empire. They have erased the Pilgrims, they're erasing Lincoln too. Erasing the Underground Railroad from the history books entirely would be a piece of cake. If they don't write it then it didn't happen.
You are absolutely right when you say they will continue revising until they hit zero.
Remember, history is their enemy.
Lincoln sited the Northwest ordence as evidence that congress could could expansion of slavery...
I looked but could not immediately find anything about this. Could you name specifically the speech or some quote longer than a sentence to make it possible to read the whole speech in its original context?
Dates and times preferred.
..... In 1784, three years before the Constitution - the United States then owning the Northwestern Territory, and no other, the Congress of the Confederation had before them the question of prohibiting slavery in that Territory; and four of the "thirty-nine" who afterward framed the Constitution, were in that Congress, and voted on that question. Of these, Roger Sherman, Thomas Mifflin, and Hugh Williamson voted for the prohibition, thus showing that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything else, properly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in federal territory. The other of the four - James M'Henry - voted against the prohibition, showing that, for some cause, he thought it improper to vote for it.
In 1787, still before the Constitution, but while the Convention was in session framing it, and while the Northwestern Territory still was the only territory owned by the United States, the same question of prohibiting slavery in the territory again came before the Congress of the Confederation; and two more of the "thirty-nine" who afterward signed the Constitution, were in that Congress, and voted on the question. They were William Blount and William Few; and they both voted for the prohibition - thus showing that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything else, properly forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in Federal territory. This time the prohibition became a law, being part of what is now well known as the Ordinance of '87.
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